Most exotic animals seen on the pet trade

What's the name of this Japanese company if I may ask?

 

I know I'm late to this party but I've just seen a baby giraffe advertised for sale on a Florida based online exotic pet store!

 

Giraffes are fairly common in the pet trade.

 

Are they? I had no idea! I live in the UK, a pet giraffe seemed pretty outrageous to me! Well learn something everyday I guess.

 

I suppose it depends if you can open the car roof and avoid low bridges

 

Ahh, that probably explains why they're more common in the US, warmer climate means it's easier to drive the convertible with the top down innit! All makes sense now.

 

The hoofs are poorly-adapted to steer the cars, so giraffes drive automatic cars, but get confused by zebra crossings

 

Giraffes are common in the United States. They're just expensive. (Who's surprised by that, though.)

 

Well, you'd expect them to have a high price

 

$15,000 (so about £11,500) ... sounds pretty reasonable to me. I assumed it was just people with Micheal Jackson type money who had giraffes! Most people here don't have big enough yards tbh.

 

A lot of roadside zoos have them. They're expensive but bring in a lot of people, especially if you charge people extra to feed them. Some places just have one by itself

 

The same Japanese company that managed to get olingos got their hands on some pale-throated sloths.

 

As someone who lives in South-east Asia (Malaysia and Singapore) and has worked plenty with both captive and wild Ophiophagus, I'm one of those people that will tell you they're definitely some of the more docile deadly snakes out there. But of course I would personally never recommend others to catch them free hand like we do.

Now that stuff like handling equipment and better understanding of these animals is increasing, we've "evolved" to also use gloves, hooks and face shields when handling them. I guess the prior knowledge of how to handle them free-hand will come in handy in the extremely rare event that we have to relocate them from someone's property and we can't find anything to contain the animal securely and properly.

 

I'd also like to say, some of the most interesting species I've seen in the trade (most of these when we travel across South-east Asia and in the markets there) would be Birds-of-paradise, Tree Kangaroos, Cuscus, Tarsiers and Asian Golden Cat.

There is also a large assortment of small mammals, birds, herptiles and inverts, and I've also seen primates like Orang-Utans and langurs, to big carnivores like Clouded Leopards and Sun Bears.

One of the most bizarre things, however, I have ever seen in a wildlife market, was an echidna. This was, if memory serves me right, in Bitung, Indonesia. The locals told us that they're usually for eating but sometimes people would buy them live to keep them as pets. I would hazard a guess to say that these animals unfortunately would not have lived for very long.

 

Did you see these orangutans and bears for sale recently? I would have thought they would be at least not openly advertised.

In Africa I saw a live pangolin on a market. The problem was the dilemma if buying and releasing it would simply prompt more catch.

But I guess this thread is about animals for sale internationally.

 

No this was back in the early 00's. When trade was still quite rife and there wasn't the same level of awareness being spread as there is today.

Pangolins were a common sight for me as well, the poor buggers.

 

I have noticed this report by TRAFFIC about the exotic pet trade on Facebook in Thailand, showing animals offered for sale in 2016. Over a two-month period, 1,521 exotic animals of 200 species were found being sold.

Among mammals, the three most commonly sold species (in order from highest to lowest) were:
1. Sunda slow loris (139 individuals)
2. Common palm civet (55 individuals)
3. Unidentified squirrels (36 individuals)

Among reptiles, the three most commonly traded species were:
1. African spurred tortoise (115 individuals)
2. Green iguana (76 individuals)
3. Elongated tortoise (31 individuals)

Among birds, the most commonly traded species were:
1. Red-whiskered bulbul (33 individuals)
2. Common hill myna (29 individuals)
3. Shikra and black-winged kite (22 individuals each)

Starting on appendix one (page 15) is the full list of species found being offered for sale from June-July 2016; the entry that perhaps surprised me the most was three different pygmy hippopotamuses - not sure where such animals would be sourced from?

The full report is included here:
https://www.traffic.org/site/assets/files/11073/trading_faces_thailand_2019.pdf

 

Not all these animals will necessarily have been wild caught. I bred seven Red-whiskered Bulbuls last year, and another six this year. Breeding pair were both bred in UK

 

Where did you see Asian Golden Cat and tree kangaroos for sale?

 

Tree Kangaroo in Indonesia (surprising bulk of these animals I listed I found there.)

Asian Golden Cat I've seen in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.